Turkey
by Narsilion
Summary: Kougaiji has issued a bowling challenge to the Sanzo-Ikkou. The prize is the Seiten Scripture but can Sanzo and the others outbowl an all-star? (Inspired by Kou-sama's beautiful shoes!)


The rain was coming down hard, striking the pavement and shattering into a thousand tiny droplets, pelting the tops of their heads and making it nearly impossible to see. Hakkai glanced over at Sanzo who was standing with his arms crossed, appearing strangely calm given the situation. "Harahita..." Goku insisted for the thousandth time. "Harahita!"

Gojyo placed a hand atop the saru's head and handed him the bag he was carrying. "Here. Eat what's in this."

Goku took the bag and opened it up excitedly. "Nani?" He said lifting a bowling ball from the bag. "What's this?"

"It's a bowing ball." Gojyo explained and smiled. "Full of vitamins."

"Let's go." Sanzo said and they followed him inside.

The inside of the bowling alley was practically deserted and smelled of cigarette smoke and beer. The typical, awful music of a bowling alley played in the background. There were fifteen lanes. Goku momentarily forgot his hunger as he took in the strange surroundings. What the heck kind of place was this? Something struck him in the stomach and then plopped onto the ground. "What's this?" he said bending over the pick up what had hit him.

"Bowling shoes, idiot!" He looked up to see Lirin standing just a few yards away. She tossed a few more pairs in the group's general direction. "Put them on."

"Sanzo...?" Goku looked up at Sanzo who was lighting up a cigarette in search of an explanation.

"Don't look at me," Sanzo replied. "This wasn't my idea..."

"What the hell is going on?" Goku insisted turning to Hakkai.

Hakkai smiled nervously and raised his index finger. "Kougaiji issued a challenge and asked to meet us here." Hakkai looked at Lirin. "Would it be safe to assume this is to be...a bowling match?"

She put her hands on her hips and proudly stated, "Brother is the best bowler in all of Shangri-La! He was named to the all-star team just last year and he's been teaching me! Of course, Doku and Yaone are here as well...they're good too." She stuck her tongue out at them. "You're all going down! Now...put on those shoes. You can't go onto the bowling lanes without them!"

"What do we get out of it?" Goku wondered aloud.

"Come down to lane 13 to find out!" Lirin said and skipped away.

They all put on their shoes and followed Lirin down to lane 13 where they found the rest of the Kougaiji-ikkou waiting for them in appropriate bowling attire. The prince of demons was sporting his red and blue all-star bowling uniform proudly...along with his ever-present black and white bowling shoes.

"It's about time you got here..." Doku commented.

"Slowed by the rain..." Gojyo replied with a wink.

"Let's cut to the chase," started Kougaiji quickly. "General bowling rules apply. If you don't know what they are then you can look over there on the wall." He pointed to a large poster on the opposite wall. "The winner of the game gets this..." He presented a scripture that Sanzo immediately recognized....The Seiten Scripture. Sanzo's eyes narrowed. "Get it?"

"Can I have something to eat instead?" Goku said putting a hand to his growling stomach. "I'm so hungry..."

"Baka!" Sanzo's harisen met with Goku's head. "Go and grab us some bowling balls."

"Never mind me..." Gojyo said lifting the bag he'd brought with him. "Once I heard something about a bowling alley, I decided to come prepared." He removed the red and black spherical swirl from the bag and held it out proudly. "I brought some good luck with me!"

"You'll need more than luck to beat Kougaiji..." Doku taunted. "He was named to the all-star team just last year."

"We've heard this already!" Sanzo stated and looked up at the screen where their names had been entered.

The screen appeared like a roster. Apparently, 'Hair-do' intended to go through this tournament style. The first two names on the list were his and Lirin's. Great, he thought and looked over at the smiling demon girl. Can't I ever get away from her?

"It seems we're opponents again." Hakkai stated, extending his hand to Yaone. "Good luck to you." She smiled.

"Since when did you have a lucky bowling ball?" Doku asked Gojyo.

"Since this morning." Gojyo replied. "We're playing together, right? Then I'll see you at lane nine."

Goku frowned as he looked over the rules to bowling that had been posted. _Bowling is not a contact sport_. "Kougaiji's just a big coward." He commented as the pins dropped for each lane. "Maybe I'll get lucky, though...I might actually be good at bowling! How hard can it be to toss a ball down a lane and knock over ten pins?"

Goku soon came to find out that it was more difficult than it seemed. By the end of the tenth frame, his score read only 24 next to Kougaiji's 198, the highest score currently on the board.

The game between Sanzo and Lirin hadn't gone much better. Lirin's score came out significantly lower than she'd imagined, even after all the training she'd received from her big brother.

Hakkai bowled a game of 143, compared to Yaone's 146. Sanzo's eye twitched as he listened to Hakkai congratulate her and even accept a few pointers for 'future games'.

Gojyo beat Doku, scoring 102 over his brother's 97 and the tournament roster was updated accordingly.

In the second round, Sanzo beat Yaone 199 to 160 and Gojyo may as well not even played Kougaiji in the second round, scoring barely sixty points against Kougaiji's 260. So much for the lucky bowling ball.

"What bad luck..." Gojyo commented and dropped his ball on the floor and sitting down next to Hakkai. "I guess we're all out, aren't we?"

"Sanzo made it to the final round," Goku said.

Gojyo placed a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. "This should be interesting then."

"Why?" Goku questioned.

"That's the Seiten Scripture, Goku." Hakkai explained. "Sanzo's been looking for that ever since it was taken from his master, Komyo Sanzo when he was younger. It's something of great sentimental value, not to mention the fact that it would severely slow the process of reviving Gyumaoh. But looking at Sanzo's past scores, honestly, there's only a very small chance that he could defeat Kougaiji."

"Are you ready, hair-do?" Sanzo asked, stepping up to Kougaiji who smiled defiantly.

"After you," the demon prince replied.

The first few frames were extremely close, Sanzo amazingly scoring only a few points below Kougaiji. But Sanzo knew that Kougaiji was only playing around and things were about to get serious. Kougaiji bowled five strikes in a row. As Sanzo's turn in the tenth and final frame came around, the priest was down by nearly thirty points. Kougaiji's final score was 278, a personal best. Sanzo's score was currently 249. In order to win, he would have to bowl a turkey, three strikes in a row. With the pressure mounting and Lirin's incessant taunting, it was going to be hard to do but he needed to have that scripture back. He turned back to Lirin who was still making faces at him and telling him how great of a bowler Kougaiji was. "Shut up, or I'll kill you." She stuck her tongue out at him and was silent. The entire bowling alley was silent.

For the first time that night, he could hear the rain beating furiously on the flat rooftop. Why is it raining? He wondered. It was distracting because it made him think, made him remember why he hated the rain...

"I wonder who decided that birds are free. Even though they can fly as they desire, if there isn't a place to land or...if there isn't a branch they can rest their wings...they may even regret having wings to fly. The true freedom might mean having a place to return..."

He hated remembering that but it was one of the few lines that occurred to him often, more often than many of the other things his master had told him. If this was true, then Sanzo was a prisoner and getting that scripture back wouldn't make any difference at all. He wasn't free. True, he could always go back to the temples and the life of a Buddhist priest but he despised that life. In his own mind, he imagined the place that his master had been speaking of to be something other than a temple. Sanzo had no place to 'rest his wings', he imagined that he never would until the day that he was dead and buried and there was nowhere left for him to fly.

But if Komyo Sanzo was wrong, and if true freedom meant to live without being restrained by anything as Sanzo had been doing since then, then getting that scripture back meant everything to him because it was the next thing to do. If he was able to hold that scripture in his hands and say that it was now his, he wouldn't have to search for it any longer. All that would remain as a restraint to him would be the curse of being born into a human body. Genjo Sanzo would be one step closer to being free. In the end, freedom was all that mattered, wasn't it? That's why he so often remembered that quote. It must be important.

"Sanzo..." he heard Hakkai's voice and turned his head slightly in reply. "Good luck, Sanzo." He smiled and Sanzo turned his concentration back to the bowling alley.

"You'll need it..." Kougaiji scoffed as Sanzo brought the bowling ball back and let it go. The ball sailed down the slick surface of the lane, landing perfectly against the pins, taking all ten of them down. The ball came back up on the conveyer-like machine and Sanzo repeated the motion with the same results. When the time came for Sanzo to let go of the third ball, Kougaiji stood and clenched his fists nervously. The ball left Sanzo's hand perfectly but Sanzo didn't watch. He turned back to Kougaiji and listened to the pins fall over, unsure of how many he'd actually managed to knock down. The look on Kougaiji's face was blank, telling him nothing and he didn't want to know.

Sanzo placed a cigarette to his mouth and casually lit it. "Let's go." He said to the others.

"But Sanzo-"

"Let's go!"

Kougaiji and his followers watched them go back out into the rain in silence. "What's wrong with him?" Lirin asked her brother.

Kougaiji frowned. "Kougaiji-sama..." Yaone said and picked up the bowling ball that Gojyo had left behind.

"I guess we'll be seeing them again." Doku stated with an odd smile. "If nothing else, to return that damn unlucky bowling ball, right Kou?"

But Kougaiji said nothing. That was a statement that needed no reply.


End file.
